William
Thornton (1759-1828)

From an early age William Thornton displayed interest
and discernible talent in "the arts of design," to
employ an eighteenth-century term that is particularly
useful in assessing his career. Although heir
to a sugar plantation on Tortola (British Virgin
Islands), he was brought up strictly by his father's
relations, Quakers and merchants, in and near
the ancient castle town of Lancaster, in northern
Lancashire, England. There was never any question
of his pursuing the fine arts professionally--he
was to be trained for a useful life, according
to the Quaker ways. Thus, despite the fact that
he had a sizeable income, young Thornton was apprenticed
for a term of four years (1777-1781), to a practical
physician and apothecary in the Furness district
of Lancashire (now Cumbria).

The earliest of Thornton's known writings, a journal
he began during his apprenticeship (Manuscript
Division, J. Henley Smith Collection of William
Thornton Papers), records almost as many entries
for drawing and sketching as notes on medical
treatments and nostrums. His subjects were most
often flora and fauna, but he also did portraits,
landscapes, historical scenes, and studies of
machinery, such as the Franklin stove, and managed
to construct a camera obscura. This pattern continued
when he enrolled as a medical student in the University
of Edinburgh in 1781. The architecture of Edinburgh,
especially that of the New Town that was building,
surely exerted considerable influence. More direct
evidence of his interest in architecture is found
in the landscapes and sketches of castles he drew
while travelling about Scotland, notably in the
Highlands, during these years (see especially
his "Notebook" (1782-1783), Manuscript
Division, Thornton Papers).

In 1783 Thornton went to London to continue his
medical studies; characteristically, he also found
time to attend lectures at the Royal Academy.
The following year he was off to the Continent,
carrying a letter of introduction to Benjamin
Franklin, written by his mentor and distant cousin
Dr. John Coakley Lettsom. Lettsom sent him to
lodge with the distinguished Dr. Jean-Joseph Sue,
professor of anatomy at the Royal College of Surgery
and the Royal School of Painting and Sculpture.
A diary for this period of his life unfortunately
does not survive. We know however that in addition
to his medical studies he frequented the salon
of the novelist Françoise, comtesse de
Beauharnais and drew her portrait, of which only
the engraving by the London artist Francesco Bartolozzi
has survived. The only remnant of Thornton's travels
beyond Paris is the landscape he drew and colored
of the glacier Mer de Glace, near Chamonix.

After he returned to England late in 1784, Thornton
might have pursued a successful medical career
in London, while pursuing his parallel interests
in the arts. Medicine and the fine arts, which,
of course, shared an interest in anatomy, were
closely allied in the eighteenth century. But
he abandoned this course and the attractions of
London in May 1785 to return to his native island.
He was intent on seeing his mother for the first
time since boyhood and on coming to grips with
the source of his income--half interest in a sugar
plantation and ownership of some 70 slaves, the
possession of which had begun to trouble him.

Thornton quickly felt confined in the Virgin Islands.
His passionate nature, shaped by the traditions
of Quaker humanitarianism and Enlightenment rationalism,
had led him to become a fervent republican. Eager
to achieve fame (and undoubtedly some expiation)
in the cause of anti-slavery, he went to Philadelphia
in the fall of 1786. His unsuccessful efforts
to lead a contingent of free black Americans to
join the small British settlement of London blacks
at the mouth of the Sierra Leone River in West
Africa were looked on favorably by Philadelphia's
Quaker establishment. Some leaders of the new
republic--notably James Madison, with whom he
lodged at Mrs. Mary House's prominent boarding
establishment in 1787 and 1788--were cognizant
of Thornton's abolitionist activities.

Thornton briefly practiced medicine in Philadelphia,
but disliked its unspecialized nature among American
doctors. From early 1787 his attention and resources
were largely devoted to the development of John
Fitch's steamboat. The only member of Fitch's
company of shareholders who had previously seen
a working steam engine, he contributed designs
for the cabin of the boat as well as mechanical
improvements. After making regular runs on the
Delaware River in the summer of 1790, the steamboat
Experiment was dismantled during Thornton's absence
in the Virgin Islands; the company attempted to
build another for the western rivers, but the
enterprise collapsed in the effort.

Soon after establishing himself in Philadelphia,
Thornton submitted in 1789 a design to the architectural
competition for the Library Company of Philadelphia's
new hall. His drawings (since lost) were awarded
the premium but were departed from somewhat during
actual construction. Library Hall was described
as the first building in the "modern [classical]
stile" to be erected in the new nation's
leading city. Thornton later boasted of this success,
emphasizing his lack of training in architecture
in letters to friends in England. He provided
a more accurate statement in the public letter
he addressed to Benajmin Latrobe in April 1808:

I travelled in many parts of Europe, and saw several
of the masterpieces of the ancients. I have studied
the works of the best masters, and my long attention
to drawing and painting would enable me to form
some judgment of the difference of proportions.
An acquaintance with some of the grandest of the
ancient structures, a knowledge of the orders
of Architecture, and also of the genuine effects
of proportion furnish the requisites of the great
outlines of composition. The minutiae are attainable
by a more attentive study of what is necessary
to the execution of such works, and the whole
must be subservient to the conveniences required.
Architecture embraces many subordinate studies,
and it must be admitted is a profession which
requires great talents, great taste, great memory.
I do not pretend to any thing great, but must
take the liberty of reminding Mr. Latrobe, that
physicians study a greater variety of sciences
than gentlemen of any other profession . . . .
The Louvre in Paris was erected after the architectural
designs of a physician, Claude Perrault, whose
plan was adopted in preference to the designs
of Bernini, though the latter was called from
Italy by Louis the 14th (Latrobe Correspondence
II: 602).

During his visit to Tortola between October 1790
and October 1792, Thornton learned of the design
competitions for the U.S. Capitol and the President's
House to be erected in the new Federal City on
the banks of the Potomac. Because a design for
the Capitol had not been chosen, he was allowed
to compete upon his return to Philadelphia. Between
July and November 1792 the Washington administration
examined closely designs submitted by the French
emigré architect Etienne Sulpice Hallet
and Judge George Turner. The latter was a close
friend of Thornton's and a fellow member of the
American Philosophical Society. Hallet and Turner
had been summoned to the Federal City in August
1792 to present their ideas to the Commissioners
of the District of Columbia and local landholders.
Both were then encouraged to submit revisions
of their designs to accommodate new conditions
and requirements. President Washington informed
Turner of his best hopes for the building; Hallet
had the benefit, or perhaps the misfortune, of
receiving hints and suggestions quite regularly
from the president, Secretary of State Thomas
Jefferson, and the commissioners. At the beginning
of November Turner's new designs were rejected;
just previously Hallet was "engaged" by
the commissioners in the urgent effort to gain
an official design.

The question of what visual evidence remains of
Thornton's Capitol design begun on Tortula is
a difficult one. He brought his first plans for
the Capitol with him to Philadelphia from the
Virgin Islands in October 1792. Thornton informed
the commissioners the following December that
because these had been "calculated upon a
five hundred feet front" he was "engaged
in making new ones more suited to the situation." He
had met with Turner in Philadelphia and must have
learned for the first time much about the site
itself and prevailing ideas about the nature of
the proposed Capitol. By the end of November,
when Turner's drawings had been returned to him,
Thornton may have had the benefit of studying
the design that at one point the commissioners
assumed would be selected. Turner's competition
drawings and revisions have been presumed lost.

Two elevations identified by Fiske Kimball and
Wells Bennett as Thornton's Tortola scheme, however,
correspond in significant details to Washington's
description of Turner's design in a letter dated
23 July 1792. These drawings, now in the Prints
and Drawings Collection of the American Architectural
Foundation (but previously in the custody of the
Architect of the Capitol), show a five-part, brick
building in the Ionic order. This design bears
little resemblance to Thornton's known work and
expressed ideas about the Capitol's nature. They
do, however, correspond to plans bearing his handwriting
(ADE
- UNIT 2468, no. 1 B size and ADE
- UNIT
2469, no. 1 A size) that have survived among his
papers, the basis for Kimball and Bennett's identification
of the drawings (now owned by the American Architectural
Foundation) as the Tortola scheme. To accept that
they represent Thornton's original idea for the
Capitol one must ignore key documentary and contextual
evidence.

There is no reason to doubt Thornton's statement
that his Tortola drawings had presupposed an expansive
front of 500 feet. To one who knew the great buildings
of Europe such a span must surely have seemed
appropriate for the new republic's principal public
building. The area and site alotted for the Capitol
on the earliest maps of Washington (a copy of
which Thornton received on Tortola with the printed
notice of the competition) suggested a building
of at least that size. The plan ADE
- UNIT 2468,
no. 1 B size which bears Thornton's handwriting
and corresponds to the elevation drawings at the
American Architectural Foundation is of a building
that measures 340 feet in width.

That Thornton took, or was given, sketches showing
ideas of other competitors, including a rough
copy of Turner's plan, while he was developing
his own design would not be surprising or irregular
in the public context of the post-deadline Capitol
competition. The formal competition had ended
by the time he returned to Philadelphia, the commissioners
employing Hallet to formulate their preferences
(as well as and those of Washington and Jefferson)
into an acceptable design. The most significant
argument against Kimball and Bennett's attribution
is that the so-called Tortola scheme springs from
an entirely different conception of the Capitol
than inspired Thornton's premiated design. Like
most of the other competitive entries, the "Tortola" design
derived from the American colonial experience,
from state house architecture, rather than from
the great models of European public buildings.
The general organization of the "Tortola" design
was based on Colen Campbell's design for his English
country palace, Wanstead, engravings of which
were published in his Vitruvius Britannicus (1715),
a widely consulted architectural treatise.

The painter John Trumbull handed Washington Thornton's
still "unfinished" revised plan of the
Capitol on 29 January 1793. (Much of Thornton's
time the previous fall had been given to the completion
of his essay "Cadmus," a treatise on
the elements of written language, which won the
prize essay competition of the American Philosophical
Society.) While the president's formal approbation
was not recorded until 2 April 1793, after more
drawings were prepared, his enthusiastic praise
of Thornton's design was echoed by Jefferson: "simple,
noble, beautiful, excellently distributed." Clearly
the two men had made their choice. This response
reflected Thornton's success in rendering in architectural
form the political order of the new republic.

In determining to construct a national Capitol,
rather than a "Congress Hall" of "Federal
Hall," Washington and Jefferson had made
it clear that they had in mind a national temple.
The model they had in mind was an idealized conception
of the great Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus
that had stood atop the Capitoline Hill in ancient
Rome. The principal building of the new republic
was to be an emblem of the nation's republican
experiment. Somewhat surprisingly, with the exception
of Hallet's first, peripteral plan, Thornton alone
of the competitors fully developed the reservoir
of ideas and sentiment that lay behind the term "Capitol." His
central motif was modeled after the Pantheon of
Rome; the east front of the Louvre, celebrated
for its grand colonnade, provided the solution
for gaining the desired expanse.

Soon after the acceptance of the Thornton design,
the commissioners hired Hallet to prepare estimates
based on it; in a now-lost lengthy critique Hallet
fround Thornton's plan too expensive and unbuildable.
A conference called by Washington and convened
by Jefferson was held in Philadelphia in July
1793, to address objections to the plan--Hallet's
ran to "five manuscript volumes in folio." Thornton
had prepared his drawings in haste and his lack
of experience in architecture and engineering
introduced a number of practical problems. This
resulted in several alterations being made to
the plan of the building, which at least in terms
of the idea and general outline of the building
must be considered minor.

Thornton's competition drawings for the Capitol
have been lost, although his retained copy of
the description that accompanied them, directed
to the commissioners, has survived. Following
the July 1793 conference, alterations were made
to the premiated plan of the Capitol, ostensibly
to correct engineering problems and to admit more
light to the interiors. It also seems that design
changes were made because of political differences
within the Washington administration. The conferees
agreed that work should proceed along the lines
of Etienne Hallet's revisions, which reversed
the positions of the chambers and altered their
forms from Thornton's rectangles to Hallet's hippodrome-shaped
rooms.

Hallet, still in the commissioners' employ, was
instructed to restore the Thornton's east portico
which he had eliminated in his final design made
after Thornton's design was chosen. Hallet misconstrued,
or more probably was misled by, the instructions
that were given him on that point. He reintroduced
the portico as a centerpiece before an open square
court, and laid the foundations of the building
accordingly. It became clear only in the following
year that the president had expected the restoration
of Thornton's grand vestibule and dome, under
which, upon his death, Washington was to be enshrined.
Another consequence of the Philadelphia conference,
it seems, was the decision, proposed by Jefferson,
to drop the floors of the two legislative chambers
to ground level.

When Washington appointed Thornton one of the
three commissioners in September 1794, he instructed
him to restore the central rotunda and other features
of the premiated plan. Thornton's surviving plan
drawings (ADE
- UNITS 2467, no. 1 D size; 2470,
nos. 2 and 3 C size; 2471,
no. 1 B size), which
show most of Hallet's changes, date from the post-conference
period; none records his original scheme with
rectangular chambers. Hallet's successor at the
site, George Hadfield, also sought to institute
a design more to his own liking. Like Hallet,
he preferred a monumental order. Interestingly,
Washington considered allowing this change in
the fall of 1795, but the question of costs, as
well as Hadfield's problems with the workmen and
construction execution, militated against it,
in the opinion of the commissioners. Because Hadfield
served as the Capitol's superintendent from 1795
until 1798, it is significant that he later informed
the public that the "engraving of the Capitol
in the city plan lately published [1818] by Mr.
Robert King" was "acknowledged to be
Dr. Thornton's design of the Capitol" and
had defined the building during his three-year
tenure as superintendent.

The most curious feature of Thornton's design
for the Capitol is his treatment or, rather, treatments
of the west front of the central block. In plan,
it would seem that from the competition period
onwards, the central space overlooking the Mall
was to be organized as a colonnaded, semi-circular
projection behind which was located the grand
conference room. The idea of employing a monumental
staircase on the west to descend from that portico
and the principal story may have occurred to Thornton
as early as April 1793. At that time he visited
the site and became acquainted with the conference
room's problems, it having been fixed below the
western crest of Capitol Hill. In any case he
enthusiastically suggested the staircase to President
Washington two years later, observing that such
a feature would give his modified west front "the
magnificence of a Roman temple." As long
as the conference room remained a part of the
design, the west wall of that room overlooked
a giant portico. Congressional impatience with
the mounting costs and slow pace of construction,
however, steadily grew, particularly after 1795,
and the design of the central block became increasingly
uncertain.

Thornton's idea of placing a high (and apparently
light) tempietto-like dome above the conference
room seems in part to reflect these changing circumstances
as well as the problem posed by the site itself.
But the drawings (ADE
- UNITS 2466, no. 3 A size;
2470,
no. 1 A size and no. 5 C size) for the west
front that survive in the William Thornton collection
also reflect a cataclysmic event in the history
of the early republic, the death of George Washington
in December 1799. Several drawings (ADE
- UNITS
2465, no. 1 A size; 2466, nos. 1 to 5 A size)
are closely related to Thornton's sketches for
free-standing monuments, most of which could only
have been intended as memorials to (if not tombs
for) the first president. These west front drawings,
unlike others that have been lost and a surviving
perspective sketch dated 1800 in the White House
collection (which probably should be attributed
to Thornton), appear to substitute a memorial
or mausoleum to replace the conference room. The
semicircular west wall was made solid and given
decoration consistent with such a monument rather
than a working legislative chamber. Thornton's
papers contain no description of this radical
change, or alternative design, for the central
block of the west front. For these reasons, and
because of his ideas of good taste in architecture,
it is doubtful, in spite of the appearance presented
by two surviving elevations drawings (ADE
- UNIT
2470, nos. 4 and 5 C size), that Thornton--or
more significantly, any of those in government
who had responsibility for the building--ever
seriously advocated the idea of constructing two
domes atop the Capitol's central section.

The shifting politics of the period does provide
a meaningful context for the change from conference
room to monument on the Capitol's west front.
When Congress convened for the first time in the
City of Washington in December 1800, the question
of where President Washington was to be buried
had not been settled. In early 1800, while still
in Philadelphia, members had resolved to bury
him in the Capitol, as mandated by Thornton's
premiated plan. By the end of the year, however,
only the north wing of the Capitol was in a state
of readiness. This presented a dilemma that, together
with political considerations, gave impetus to
the idea of constructing a separate mausoleum.
Such a project was sure to siphon off appropriations
and further delay completion of the Capitol. These
were certainly sufficient reasons for Thornton
to attempt to redirect the debate with an alternative
design for the west front. In any event, the mausoleum
proposal failed to pass the Senate by a single
vote in March 1801, and after the inauguration
of President Jefferson, the matter of a Washington
monument was dropped. Thornton was consulted on
design matters relating to the Capitol by President
Jefferson and his successors, but after 1802,
when the Commissioners of the District of Columbia
were abolished, he exerted little influence.

All of the surviving drawings (ADE
- UNIT 2465,
no. 1 A size; ADE
- UNIT 2466, nos. 1 to 5 A size;
ADE
11 - A - THORNTON 22; 23; 26; 27; 32; 33)
for free-standing monuments in the Thornton collection
appear to be designs for memorials to George Washington,
who died on 14 December 1799. No other figure
of the early republic could have commanded such
artistic attention in the United States at this
time; this conclusion is strengthened by Thornton's
personal feelings for the man he referred to as "my
great patron." The changing mood of Congress
on how to memorialize the first president provides
important context for the dating of these monuments:
support for Thornton's original idea of placing
a monumental tomb under the dome of the U.S. Capitol
gradually eroded in 1800; by the time Congress
convened in December 1800 those who sought to
memorialize Washington had come to favor a freestanding
mausoleum; but in March 1801 the Senate failed
by one vote to approve such a monument and discussion
ceased.

Thornton's designs for freestanding monuments
are closely related to his alternative west front
scheme for the U.S. Capitol in technique as well
as in theme: his series of wash sketches for monuments
seems directly related to the wash sketch drawing
of the alternative west front of the U.S. Capitol
(ADE
- UNIT 2470, no. 1 A size). But Anna Maria
Thornton records in 1813 that her husband was
working on a drawing for the monument that was
to be erected to the first president in Baltimore,
and thus that later work and date must also be
kept in mind in weighing these drawings, all of
which, unfortunately, if characteristically, are
unlabeled and unsigned. In September 1794 President
Washington appointed Thornton to the board of
the three Commissioners of the District of Columbia.
At various times during his tenure he was requested
to produce additional drawings and studies, and
we know that in 1797 he was making drawings of
the Capitol for publication, a project that unfortunately
he did not complete. Because only six developed
drawings by Thonrton survive from 1793 to 1804,
and fewer construction drawings done by the three
superintending architects, visual records of the
early Capitol must always be carefully considered
within the context of extensive documentary evidence
in assessing Thornton's role.

As a consequence of winning the Capitol competition,
Thornton was frequently asked to give ideas for
public and residential buildings in the Federal
City. He responded with designs on several occasions
during his tenure as a commissioner, less so after
1802 when he took on the superintendency of the
Patent Office, a position which kept him busy
and often besieged in another area of design until
his death in 1828. Only a few drawings for these
projects survive, and we know of those for which
drawings are lost principally through Anna Maria
Thornton's diary. Other than his design (ADE
-
UNIT 2588) for Thomas Peter's Tudor Place, the
project best documented by the drawings that have
survived, there is no evidence of sustained architectural
work in this later period. In 1817, Jefferson
wrote to request designs for his projected university
(Manuscript Division, Thomas Jefferson Papers).
The idea of a university had long inspired Thornton,
and it produced from him drawings for two buildings
linked by colonnades. They most noticeably influenced
Jefferson in his design for Pavilion VII, as well
as in his decision to employ rounded columns in
the colonnades fronting the lawn at the University
of Virginia.

Thornton's interests in residential design antedate
his projects for which drawings have survived,
and thus it is safe to conclude that he prepared
drawings for friends and relations prior to his
efforts for Colonel John Tayloe, which can be
dated by context to 1799. His plans (ADE
- UNIT
2588) for Tayloe's townhouse are nevertheless
the earliest of these that we have. Thornton probably
first suggested the idea of using a curvilinear
element to take an odd-angled corner lot a year
earlier, to Thomas Law, who had determined to
build a residence on Capitol Hill, at the northwest
corner of New Jersey Avenue and C Street S.W.,
but drawings for that project have not survived
(see Benjamin Latrobe's 1815 sketch reproduced
in Harris, Thornton Papers I: fig. 38 and 574-95).

The two plan drawings (ADE
- UNIT 2581) for Tayloe's
house, which became known in the nineteenth century
as The Octagon, are more ambitious in their use
of curvilinear forms than the modified plan to
which Tayloe built. The house was erected between
1799 and 1802 by the architect William Lovering,
who in the same year was constructing Law's town
house as well as the temporary building over the
elliptical foundations in the south wing of the
Capitol. A plan of Tayloe's lot, with elevations
for the stable and yard buildings, bearing Lovering's
handwriting, has survived in a private collection
(reproduced in Ridout, Building the Octagon, 70).

Thornton's drawings (ADE
- UNIT 2588) for Tudor
Place, the residence above Georgetown constructed
by his friend Thomas Peter between 1805 and 1816,
form the fullest record of his drawings for a
single project. His first and simplest idea, of
a classical villa or casino, was probably inspired
by the site itself, which resembled an ancient
sylvan retreat in the early nineteenth century.
Thomas Peter's wish to incorporate existing structures
on the property in his new mansion house likely
explains Thornton's shift to a more complicated
design and his reworking of floor plans. Retained
throughout this process was the organizing element
and distinguishing feature of the house--the circular
portico in the south front, which the Peter family
called "the temple." The building that
was actually constructed departed to a significant
extent from the elevation and plan drawings (on
one sheet) which Thornton presented to Peter (held
in the collections of the Tudor Place Foundation;
reproduced in Peter, Tudor Place, after p. 80--Thornton
probably gave John Tayloe and other friends similar
presentation drawings of his final ideas). Dating
of the Tudor Place drawings relies on Anna Maria
Thornton's diary entry for 8 May 1808, on which
day she recorded: "Dr. T. working on a plan
for Mr. Peter"; however, because the Peters
and the Thorntons were close friends and saw each
other frequently, the possibility that the first
design antedates 1808 cannot be dismissed. It
should also be noted that three elevation drawings
for Tudor Place are held in the Prints and Drawings
Collection of The American Architectural Foundation.

Thornton was an active naturalist throughout most
of his life. His attention to botanical subjects
reflected the pleasure he derived from nature
studies as well as his professional and scholarly
interests. He made drawings (ADE
11 - A - THORNTON
59 to 63; 65) of botanical specimens from his
days as a medical apprentice and, while attending
the University of Edinburgh, participated in the
founding of the Natural History Society of Edinburgh
at that university. His papers, and Anna Maria
Thornton's diaries, contain numerous references
to his drawings of plants and, occasionally, of
animals--however, no finished works have been
found, and thus the few sketches of such subjects
now in the Prints and Photographs Division's William
Thornton collection are by no means representative
of the original corpus of his work. Several of
Thornton's developed or finished drawings were
dispersed as gifts during his lifetime (Harris,
Thornton Papers I: 209, and Alexander von Humboldt
to Thornton, 27 June 1804, Harris, Thornton Papers
II: forthcoming), others were given away or sold
prior to the Library of Congress's receipt of
his papers; thus there is reason to believe that
some of these drawings may have survived, in private
and public collections around the world (at present
likely attributed to "anonymous"). One
of Thornton's nature drawings (ADE
11 - A - THORNTON
62 verso) is possibly of a crown vetch. On 29
June 1805, while traveling in North Carolina,
Anna Maria Thornton noted: "Our vetch is
called the partridge pea" suggesting that
this drawing, like its precisely dated companion
on the verso of the same sheet, relates to the
travels the Thorntons undertook and commented
on during the years 1805-8.

A few drawings found among his papers probably
were not done by either Thornton or his wife.
They include, ADE
11 - A - THORNTON 39, a manuscript
map of the central part of North Carolina, showing
landholdings and mines of Thornton's North Carolina
Gold Company. County names are misspelled, clearly
indicating the map was not prepared by either
of the Thorntons. Drawing ADE
11 - A - THORNTON
50 is a view from the northwest of the Hogshead-Hole,
near Carlisle, Cumberland, England. Drawing ADE
11 - A - THORNTON 51 depicts Dan o' Deer, ruins
of the Scottish abbey. An internal view of the
Ear of Dyonisius [sic], the grotto-like rock formation
found at Syracuse, Sicily, that was described
by Thucydides, is initialed "C.D.C.," possibly
C.D. Coxe. ADE
11 - A - THORNTON 24 and 25 are
drawings of the Friends' meeting house near Swarthmoor
Hall in Cumbria, England. In 1687 George Fox adapted
the house for use as a meetinghouse. It was probably
drawn by Thornton's cousin, Myles Foster (d. 1779),
is based on the manuscript poem "On Death" by
Foster (see Thornton's journal, Thornton Papers,
Manuscript Division.)

Thornton was a sophisticated designer, endowed
with natural talent and exceptional visual memory.
He brought a scholarly and painterly approach
to architectural design and, for political as
well as aesthetic reasons, adhered to neo-Roman
classicism in a period increasingly influenced
by the neo-Greek. He relied for details on the
best published authorities (such as Claude Perrault
and William Chambers for the classical orders,
probably Robert Adam, in some cases, for floor
plans); nevertheless, his drawings were not copied
from books but, rather, responded fluidly to conceptual
and practical design criteria, albeit within the
established classical style of the Europe he had
left in 1784. His personal library in fact appears
to have been relatively modest. He did, however,
have access to the books of friends, and in his
work for the Capitol competition must have made
use of the collections of the Library Company
of Philadelphia, a share of which had been his
prize for winning the competition for Library
Hall.

Thornton's lack of experience in architectural
drawing led him, when under pressures of time,
into technical errors, and his lack of training
proved a handicap in the most difficult engineering
problems. Yet even his bitter rival Latrobe would
grudgingly acknowledge his talent. Thornton's
encyclopaedic interest in the design arts, and
his persistence in seeking out the details of
composition, materials, and techniques, as well
as related information and gossip, renders his
papers among the most important collections for
the scholarly study of the art and architecture
of the early republic.

The Library's J. Henley Smith Collection of the
William Thornton Papers, now held in both the
Manuscript Division and the Prints and Photographs
Division, forms a valuable resource for the art
and architecture, as well as the history, of the
early republic. This collection of Thornton's
personal, retained papers came to the Library
of Congress in two gifts to the Manuscript Division
in 1904 and 1907. Worthington Ford, then Chief
of the Manuscript Division, put drawings of the
Capitol on exhibition soon after the first of
two gifts was made in 1904, and, it would seem,
transferred them with the loose graphics that
bear the "42176" accession number to
the Division of Prints at some point during the
same year. Another transfer was made from the
Manuscript Division a few years later, after the
remaining collection there had been accessioned
and stamped with consecutive-type folio numbers.
Other drawings, notably those for the U.S. Capitol
which were later annotated by Benjamin Latrobe,
joined the William Thornton collection of the
Prints and Photographs Division at other times.
It should be noted that the seventeen volumes
and containers held in the Manuscript Division
contain a number of small drawings and sketches
and a few graphic works.